Hi, I'm Tom Campbell,
Director of The Metropolitan Museum.
And I'm here in our European Painting Galleries
to tell you about an exciting discovery
we recently made in our own collections.
I'm with Keith Christiansen,
Chairman of our European Paintings Collection,
and Michael Gallagher, a conservator in charge
of our European Paintings Conservation Department.
We're in a gallery full of Velazquez paintings.
Keith, can you tell us a little bit about that collection?
CHRISTIANSEN: Yeah, it's a collection that covers
virtually all the crucial steps
of Velazquez's development.
We have a picture from his Seville period,
we have an equestrian portrait of the famous Count Olivares.
We have one of the greatest portraits
that Velazquez ever painted, Juan de Pareja,
which was acquired by this museum in 1970,
and a picture that won Velazquez his reputation
in Rome in 1650, when it was publicly exhibited
outside the portal of the Pantheon.
And now we have a new portrait from the 1630s.
CAMPBELL: Now, tell me about it.
This painting came into the collection
as a self-portrait by Velazquez,
but over the years, the attribution changed.
How did that happen?
The picture can be traced back only to around 1800,
when it was in a royal collection in Germany.
1917, it was published
by the leading Velazquez scholar, August Mayer,
as a self-portrait by Velazquez.
And when it was acquired by the firm of Duveen in 1925,
it was sold in 1926 to Jules Bache,
who left it to this museum in 1949.
- Still as a Velazquez? - Still as a Velazquez.
It was then restored,
and I think began its downhill trip to de-attribution,
wouldn't you say, Michael?
Why did that happen-- what went wrong?
When August Mayer saw it in 1925 and describes it,
I'm sure he's seeing it in a clean state.
We have in the paperwork that Duveen sent it out for cleaning.
He describes it very accurately, as you see it today.
But then, it was restored with the market in mind,
And everything that was sketchy, free, unresolved,
was suppressed.
And there was this sort of attempt to turn it
into a finished portrait.
Rather thick varnish was applied.
CAMPBELL: It looked like gravy. GALLAGHER: Yeah, exactly.
And as the intervention, that had changed the character,
became cruder,
so did the painting seem to lose its quality in people's eyes,
and it became a workshop.
By 1979, The Met changed
the attribution itself. - Yes.
What set off the new investigation?
I came here in 2005,
and Keith and I had a walk through the galleries.
And he said, "You know, this portrait's always intrigued me.
"It seems far too good just to be generic workshop."
CHRISTIANSEN: Michael's right,
this picture has intrigued me for 20, 25 years.
And I've walked by it many times,
particularly after visits to the Prado.
Standing in front of "The Surrender of Breda,"
where one sees the exact same sitter as in our portrait.
You think, "What's the scenario for our sitter being...
"accepting a workshop portrait of himself
"when he's important enough to be included
"in one of Velazquez's signature greatest compositions?
We need to find more out about this."
Here we have this unidentified man,
who clearly relates to this famous figure
in "The Surrender of Breda,"
and you start working on it.
What happened next?
Um, I started to thin the varnish,
and it was just very dramatic, the change.
And I rang him about two and a half hours later
and said, "Oh, I think you really need
to come up right now."
And he sort of hung up immediately.
And we were both very, very excited,
because part of the pictorial portions
that I'd feared were very worn
were in fact just very thinly painted,
they'd never been taken to this high degree of finish.
And we suddenly thought, "Oh this is a life study,
This isn't a sort of worn portrait, this is a..."
CAMPBELL: A finished... GALLAGHER: Yeah, exactly.
And how long had you been working on it
before I got the call from Keith,
saying, "You've got to come right now"?
It was all very short.
I would say that one of the most remarkable things
about all of this
is the degree of the transformation.
And in the 32 years I've been here,
I don't think I've seen such a radical transformation
by the mere removal of layers of varnish and repaint,
and it's a testimony to the extraordinary, subtle technique
of Velazquez, who achieved so much with so little
that it could be hidden so easily.
The thing that really hit me when we looked at it together
was the extent to which the face is so finished,
I mean, very spontaneous, but finished.
Everything else is just so sketched in.
Now, I know that once you had got to this point
you had removed the varnishes, you called in...
CHRISTIANSEN: Jonathan Brown.
- You called in Jonathan Brown, the great expert on Velazquez.
What was his response?
CHRISTIANSEN: I was expecting a drawn-out process.
He came up, he bent over, five seconds, said,
"No question who painted this.
Congratulations on the new acquisition."
CAMPBELL: So not a formal portrait, a studio study,
exquisitely handled, for "The Surrender of Breda."
And who is it?
This has long had an attribution as being a self-portrait.
GALLAGHER: Occupying a place on the margins,
looking out at the viewer,
this is exactly where artists frequently introduce themselves
into their pictures.
CAMPBELL: But even in an event as important
as the, this great historical moment...
CHRISTIANSEN: That's the issue,
and that's where Jonathan Brown quite rightly says,
"Given the strict hierarchy of the Spanish court,
"the sense of decorum, Velazquez would almost certainly
"not have been permitted to introduce his portrait
into a picture of this historical importance."
CAMPBELL: So this remains an open question.
- It remains an open question.
- Our public can come here... - Absolutely, think about...
CAMPBELL: Try and make their own decision.
CHRISTIANSEN: I think it remains incredibly intriguing.
CAMPBELL: Well, great.
So often, when I get those excited telephone calls,
I fear it's going to be a very expensive purchase
that I'm being pitched for,
but on this occasion,
we were discovering a new acquisition
within our own collections. - That's right.
- So, well, congratulations, both of you, thank you.
So there you have it.
An exciting discovery from our own collection,
and the fascinating demonstration
of the way that art history is an ongoing process,
an ongoing dialog
between scholars, conservators, and the public.
You must come and see the painting for yourself
here at The Metropolitan Museum.
Thank you.